Cons:

Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella Heart of Darkness explored a brilliant man's descent into savagery in the heart of the African jungle. There's no question that Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 takes these same themes and presents them in a modern context (there's even an area near the climax of the game called "Heart of Darkness.") In the same way that the novel's enigmatic Kurtz played native tribes against each other, Far Cry 2's villain "The Jackal" is selling arms to two modern-day African warlords in a devastated nation. And as a player, you're beginning your own savage journey to the jungle's lawless heart to stop him.

As a game, Far Cry 2 has moments of greatness. Artistically it's a real triumph -- the industry as a whole should take note of the techniques used to create a real sense of first-person immersion. This game really puts the player into the shoes of a mercenary with nothing to lose and no line he won't cross. Additionally, the set-piece combat sequences are tactically open-ended and a joy to play through.

Unfortunately these terrific moments are padded out with a lot of repetitive, sometimes tedious travel. Five minutes of tense first-person excitement is matched by fifteen minutes of driving around, picking up a mission, shooting through the same checkpoint for the fifteenth time, and travelling to the next site. There are places we would've gladly sacrificed the immersion just to be able to travel quickly to other parts of the world, or to stop the endless procession of machine-gun trucks trying to ram us. In the end, Far Cry 2 has a lot to offer -- at its best, it's one of the best shooters of the year -- but the overall package doesn't quite live up to the game's potential.

Welcome to the Jungle

Far Cry 2 takes place in a fictional African country, beautifully rendered in its entirety. 50 square kilometers of terrain are open for seamless exploration (except for one loading screen between the Northern and Southern halves of the embattled nation). Africa's natural beauty is all laid bare: hill, mountains, savannahs, marshes, dense jungles, dune-covered deserts, and everything in-between. Far Cry 2 rivals the PC game Crysis in its depiction of dense vegetation, swaying in the breeze and realistically shadowed. Gunfire will lop off palm fronds and decimate the undergrowth. Grenades will throw up a shower of dirt and leaves.

The environment can also fight back unexpectedly. Dried savannah grass is prone to brush fires, which can cause you a lot of problems or create a spectacular diversion for the enemy. It never gets old to shoot a gasoline canister, then watch it explode and tear the side off of a building, igniting a nearby propane tank which propels itself through the front wall and across the dried grass like a fiery land torpedo. Enemies rush around as the fires grow into a full-fledged conflagration, engulfing nearby thatched roofs and spreading across the terrain.

Performance-wise, the game ran great on GameSpy's test machines. If you have a system capable of playing Crysis, you should be able to run Far Cry 2 with all the settings turned up.

You can explore these lush environments at will, and the graphics are certainly outstanding. But what really sells the environment is how your character is a part of it. When you leap into a truck, the camera moves precisely as your head would as you clamber inside -- you can see your hands on the steering wheel and your feet on the pedals (every character has different hands and clothes, a nice detail). When you switch seats your viewpoint shifts accordingly. It can give you a little vertigo as your viewpoint tips to represent ducking under the rollbar and shifting over to the driver's seat, or vaulting over the front seats to clamber up to the machine-gun emplacement in the back, but it really puts you in the scene. Similarly, you can see your hands reach out to take documents or suitcases from other characters, and the swimming animations allow you to see and feel every stroke and every breath. You are in Africa!

Animations when you recover from fatal wounds are spectacular. Your character might dig shrapnel out of his leg with a knife, or rip a bullet out of his own arm with his teeth. That's something you never see in a first-person shooter.